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ANNE LINDBERGThe former Millbrooke Station will cater only to home buyers - with horses and without - and not renters if builders get their wish.
PINELLAS PARK - Developers who wanted to build apartments on the site of a former horse farm have changed their plans again: They want to build single-family homes instead.
Roger Broderick has submitted four plans for the former Millbrooke Station stables, 5400 62nd Ave. N, but it's the first time he has eliminated the 140 apartments.
In their place he is hoping to build almost 50 single-family homes. Not affected by the changes are the 16 estate-style homes with enough acreage for a horse that are planned for the southwest portion of the property. Also unaffected is the riding trail that surrounds the estate-style homes and the trail that Broderick will build on a 10-acre city-owned tract adjacent to the Millbrooke land.
The City Council must approve the new plan. The first step is scheduled next month in front of the Pinellas Park Planning and Zoning Commission.
The price range for the new homes is unavailable. Broderick did not return a phone message asking for comment.
But Randy Wedding, the architect designing the project, said the change is "customer-driven." It appears the developers have found there is a strong demand for single-family homes, Wedding said. "The market is strong and the customer base likes that (style of home)."
More than half of the estate-style lots have sold, Wedding said. The prices for those lots - without homes - range from $99,000 to $250,000. The latter is for a 2-acre lot. "The price of poker is going up, as they say," Wedding said.
Wedding's and Broderick's proposal has received intense scrutiny ever since he announced plans in late 2001 to develop the Millbrooke property and annex it into Pinellas Park.
Millbrooke was a land bridge connecting east and west Lealman, the unincorporated areas that for a time worked toward uniting as a city. Pinellas Park's annexation of the property essentially spiked that plan.
Lealman activists also were upset that, in making a deal with Millbrooke, the Pinellas Park council agreed to waive $74,100 in development fees. City officials also waived the cost to purchase, install and connect 18 water meters and other equipment to the houses and apartment complex - an additional $5,870 benefit to developer Roger Broderick.
County officials questioned the propriety of Pinellas Park's decision to "join" 10 acres of adjacent city parkland to the Millbrooke site - a manufactured increase in density that allowed Broderick to build more homes. Broderick agreed to build a horse trail on the city property.
Horse lovers who boarded and took riding lessons at Millbrooke were appalled at the prospect of losing an equestrian landmark and one of the last large barns in the Pinellas Park area.
And Millbrooke's neighbors along 62nd Avenue worry about losing the green space and dealing with increased traffic.